Chapter Thirteen #2
“That’s good. Amazing.” Hopefully she’s enough of a stranger to this man that he won’t notice the way her tone is just a little off.
She smiles wider and takes another swig of her drink.
Then she confesses very quickly, “You know, I get really nervous talking to guys like this. Like I’m not sure what to say or ask next. ”
Arjun’s smile softens then. He says, “You could ask if I come here often. In a less overdone way, I’d assume.”
“Right, okay. But then, what would I say to that? Would it indicate anything about you for me to know this?”
“Well, maybe, if you go out very often, or if you don’t.”
All Aubrey finds to respond is, “Right,” which sucks.
“Or you could make another quirky comment about how terrible you are at this.” Arjun shrugs, and the jab would sting if he didn’t seem ever so amused by the situation.
Or at least it’s what Aubrey hopes, her fingers wet around her cold glass and her outfit just a little too tight in all the wrong places.
She says, “It’s really not any kind of move, if that’s what you’re thinking. ”
“I think anything can be a kind of move on the right person.”
“Ah. Is that implying something?”
“I just mean, I also get nervous talking to women, and I also happen not to know what to say next. So in a way this is good, but also very bad, because it appears we’ll hit a dead end.”
“Mm. But we can bond over this, how terrible this whole ordeal is. Going up to random people with nothing but sheer luck on your side, and saying hey, nice to meet you, I’ve decided to talk to you based solely on the way you look just now, and I’m hoping somehow you’re someone I’ll enjoy conversing with. ”
“Yeah, you do make it sound appealing. If you ask the guys I’m with, they’d say it doesn’t really matter what the person has to say, so long as they’re easy on the eyes and ready to rehash the same surface-level topics on a somewhat continuous loop until you end up sucking face.”
“Oh, so I should go and talk to them, then.”
“Yeah,” Arjun says through soft laughter, with a nod and a look that catches the light around them. “Well, anyway. I don’t want to hold you off any longer.”
Aubrey wants to tell him he’s not, but there’s something in the way he says this that suggests it’s not the right answer. So she smiles and nods and says, “Nice chatting, Arjun.”
“Yeah, same.” He looks away now when he speaks, but once in a while he glances over. “Sorry, it’s—I’m with these guys there, and I’m mostly sticking around just to feel a little less like a hermit, so they get off my case about never leaving the house. I’m not really looking to—well. You know.”
“Right. Of course.”
Aubrey loses him for a second when he leans over the bar to order something from the bartender. It’s only for a moment, but she wonders if it’s her cue to leave, and why can’t she bring herself to. She says, almost to herself, “Well, have fun with the guys.”
He turns then and gives a curt nod. “Good luck with the chat lottery.”
She’s smiling when she turns away. It does feel like a lottery.
And it’s a hard one, not the kind you can hope to get a couple bucks from once in a while.
Because even when you think you’ve struck a winning draw, you realize easy conversation and a shared discomfort with meeting strangers isn’t always enough to lead to anything more, even if you’ve decided that for once you actually want to sit there and talk to this person, maybe just a little longer.
When people ask Aubrey why she’s still single, all these scenes play through her mind in a loop.
But she can’t replay all of them, can’t put into efficient words the overwhelming story they weave to lead her here.
So she says, “I really can’t explain it,” or “I just haven’t found anyone I really click with yet,” or some other excuse, but really, it’s all of this.
It’s summer camp, uncomfortable blind dates, going to bars and feeling drained before you have a chance to get tipsy.
She admires the women who try again and again, and the women who hardly have to try at all.
Aubrey spins in her stool to catch Florence’s attention but comes face to face with someone else she knows instead.
He recognizes her just as fast, she can tell. At the exact same time, they both say, “Hi.”
It’s stilted, which hits Aubrey right in the chest. She feels compelled to smile.
Raphael looks exactly the same, though surely he wouldn’t have changed in just a few months. Still, it’s weird to see him standing there.
He stares like he’s buffering. Then he leans over to give Aubrey a stiff sort of shoulder hug. “How’ve you been? It’s been a while!”
Everything feels weird—the tone of his voice, the expression on his face, the black leather jacket he’s wearing.
“Good, yeah, I’m great,” she hears herself say.
She knows she’s staring. “You look like you’ve been well.
” She wants so desperately to ask why he cut her off the way he did.
If she’s right in the assumption she replays over and over in her mind.
Instead, she smiles and tries to look like the detached, somewhat elegant woman she’s set on projecting.
Raphael offers a bashful “Thank you.” Then he asks, with a quick glance at the space around them, “Can we head outside to talk for a bit?”
“Oh.” She gawks at him for a second. The question is so unexpected, different from the well, see you she anticipated. “Should we?”
“There’s just a couple things. I think you might want to hear them.”
Aubrey wishes she’d hesitate more before saying, “Sure. Okay.”